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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2249 ..

Mr Osborne: They fell for it.

MS McRAE: They fell for it? Now, instead of simply saying, "Oh, it was a bit daft", what do they do? They say, "Oh, let us take it to a committee". What is more, not their own committee, but Mr Moore's committee, thank you very much, on which I sit.

Ms Tucker: Ms Horodny is on it.

MS McRAE: It is not good enough. If Mr Moore wants an inquiry, Mr Moore should call for an inquiry. I do not like the idea at all.

Mr De Domenico: Would you support it if Mr Moore put - - -

MS McRAE: No, I would not, but that is a different issue. Let us debate that one later. My reasons for not supporting it if Mr Moore were doing it would be quite different. Today I will just debate the reasons why I do not support the Greens doing it. When he first put the idea, may I remind you, I did say it was daft. I was quoted as saying, "For heaven's sake, how many more inquiries can we have?". So I have already opposed Mr Moore, and he said, "Oh dear, yes, you are right, Ms McRae", and he backed off, did he not? Our erstwhile Greens now have picked up this issue and have avoided the basic issue at hand. If they do not like what this Government is doing they can vote against it. Purely and simply vote against it. Then the Government, put there by the Greens, can be sent away to do their homework and to deal with the very issues that the Greens have problems with. We all agree that those are issues that we should be dealing with, but why deal with them in a committee when we have a Government that has 17 inches of paper, at the very least, in front of them and that has the full resources of the bureaucracy behind it? They can go away and deal with these issues. The Greens can say, "Bring it back and try again".

There is absolutely no reason to support this legislation today. They want to support the formation of the committee today just because people are getting cold feet about how they are going to vote for legislation this afternoon. It is just a stunt. The Government has rushed into a simplistic solution. It is painting this up with all sorts of earnest endeavours to try to placate the small business sector, but it will not, and the Greens have recognised that. The Greens have recognised that the solution proposed by the Government does not go far enough. It does not deal with the basic problems at hand, and it inconveniences a lot of people.

Ms Horodny no doubt has heard from the good constituents of Ginninderra that there are 1,400 people who live in the vicinity of the Belconnen Mall. They use the Belconnen Mall as their primary shopping centre and many of them do not have cars. Many of those people work long hours and greatly appreciate the opportunity to go to the movies and then to go shopping. They have enjoyed that amenity greatly and will be greatly inconvenienced by the changes that are to come. They bought their properties and they are, by no means, not all cheap properties. They made their decisions on a basic set of rules that are now being affected. I hope that all 1,400 ring Ms Horodny. I certainly have had a stream of complaints. It is directly affecting our constituents, our electorate.

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